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TheMail recently had a conversation with AffiliateManager.com President and Co-Founder Jon Nunez. Jon gave us the inside scoop on his start in performance marketing, where he sees the industry headed in the future, and even offers up some sound advice for publishers.

Who are you and how did you get started in performance marketing?

My name is Jon Nunez, and I am the President and Co-Founder of AffiliateManager.com and AffiliateRecruitment.com. In 2002, I launched several campaigns for companies that were just entering into the affiliate marketing space. In order to successfully compete with more established brands, I developed and executed strategies to attract major affiliates, secured premium placement for my merchants’ offers, and provided a platform for affiliates to consistently drive results while receiving highly dedicated support. In 2004, my Co-Founder and I identified a need for quality outsourced affiliate program management, and we launched Suluta.com. Our success with Suluta enabled us to acquire and re-brand as AffiliateManager.com, which has increased our brand awareness and affiliate base significantly. For the past 11 years, I’ve managed affiliate programs for brands that range in size from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Most recently at AffiliateManager.com, we have focused on developing affiliate tools and new software applications to streamline the management of even the most complex affiliate programs.

What are you best known for and why?

For those outside of my company, I am known for releasing AffiliateRecruitment.com and winning the 2013 Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year. Internally, I am known as a workaholic—I believe my 3:00 am emails may have something to do with that.

What is hot with you right now?

For the past couple of years, we’ve had a lot of success with Pay Per Call offers. I’ve managed Pay Per Call campaigns for several major brands, including Allstate, Devry, and DIRECTV, among many others. The conversion rates we see, with quality traffic, usually range from 35% to 47%, which has been highly profitable for our partners.

What are your 5 tips for publishers?

Be accessible—you may miss out on a good opportunity if you can’t be reached. We get it, you’re busy, just be sure to reward those who work hard for you and respect your time by only presenting you with relevant offers that are worth your while.

Don’t only focus on what is hot right now; think ahead and experiment with offers that have potential for paying off later on.

Explore your options and don’t settle by operating under terms that are one-sided. There is likely a competitor that will also value your contributions and compensate you as such.

Launch campaigns that have worth and that aren’t unjustly taking credit for sales that would have occurred anyway. By driving incremental sales/leads, your partnerships will last longer, and merchants will be less likely to pull the plug on your campaigns.

Protect the affiliate marketing industry by speaking out against the Nexus Tax. There are organizations you can support, such as the Performance Marketing Association, that need help fighting for us all.

If you were to bet on one thing for the future right now what would it be and why?

Much more advanced attribution models will become the de facto method used by internet marketing professionals to determine the value of all online sales. With greater tools such as Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnels, advertisers will be able to measure the true impact each marketing channel had on their overall sales. With this insight, the next natural step is to begin shifting “credit” to those driving incremental revenue, and not those that insert themselves into the purchase process. When shifting the “credit” for sales that occur, budget will certainly follow. This is an absolutely necessary evolution of our industry, as today most marketing dollars are allocated by the way too simple “last click” model, stealing funds from sources higher in the buying funnel, and ultimately choking new customer acquisition efforts.

Who do you admire in the industry and why?

There are too many to name, but here are a few:

Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, work at home mom, and philanthropist Missy Ward. I’ve always admired her ability to juggle the role as an affiliate marketing industry leader, while always making time to support charitable organizations.

Partner Manager at Google Michael Nunez for his work ethic, innovative ideas and personal guidance.

Veteran Affiliate Marketer and SEO Consultant Sugar Rae for her professional tenacity and her charitable efforts.

Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, and Founder of GeekCast.fm Shawn Collins for his hard work and diligence keeping us all updated on everything in our industry (even though he’s a Jets fan).

Owner of RhinoFish Media Pat Grady—let’s just call Pat an affiliate marketing guru. We work together daily, and seeing him drive the type of results he does through ethical practices and hard work never ceases to amaze me.

Founder of SEER and SEO pro Wil Reynolds for his expert knowledge and enlightening speaking sessions.

Who are you trying to connect with and why should they work with you?

With my agency, AffiliateManager.com, I am trying to connect with dynamic brands that have, thus far, chosen to stay away from outsourcing their affiliate programs. It would benefit these brands to take advantage of our services because we have developed strategies to drastically reduce the “cost of sale” of affiliate campaigns, and we have executed these strategies hundreds of times so that they are reliably profitable. Through these strategies, our work typically ends up more than paying for itself, and we have a policy of transparency to further put our partners at ease about the amount of time and effort put into managing their programs.

Who else do you think TheMail should interview and why?

I would enjoy reading about what any of the people I listed as those I admire have to say. I believe they all would add value to any dialogue on the topic of affiliate marketing.

If people want to reach you what is the best way of contacting you?

I can be reached by email at Jon[at]affiliatemanager.com or by phone at 407-463-4449.

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